Dan Droz

Daniel Myron Droz (born August 27, 1950), also known as Dan Droz, is an American interdisciplinary sculptor, industrial designer, entrepreneur, author, and educator. Apart from his sculpture, his work includes seminal research and practice in various disciplines, including design theory, rapid prototyping/product development, branding strategy, and manufacturing process. Droz is the founder of Droz Marketing and Droz and Associates and co-founder of technology startups, Essential Surfing Gear, Wishbox.com., and Emodt. In 2019, at 69, he began to devote full-time to sculpture. His large-scale sculptures have been commissioned for numerous public and private sites, including the Museum of Art and History (Lancaster, CA) and the entrance to the historic Heritage Trail (Pittsburgh, PA).

Background and education

Droz was born to Minnie and Sidney Droz in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Brookline, a working-class neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. His mother was a homemaker, and his father operated a welding and woodworking shop that allowed him to learn welding and woodworking. He has a brother, Gary. At 12, Droz created his first sculpture, a 3’ welded steel sculpture of Don Quixote, and later became interested in magic. He was fascinated by the two realities, what spectators see and what’s really going on, that has informed both his design and sculpture, often incorporating hidden spaces and punctuating the observation that perception is often misleading.

Droz attended Harvard College for a double major in History of Science and Visual and Environmental Studies, graduating cum laude in 1972. During this period, he became an assistant to his professor, designer, and sculptor Toshiro Katayama and designed posters for Harvard events. In 1972, Droz, for a brief time, served as the Guest Design Director of the Mademoiselle Magazine and traveled to Finland to meet Armi Ratia, founder of Marimekko, who introduced him to the idea of design entrepreneurship which inspired him to start his design and manufacturing company.

Career

Designer

In 1973, Droz returned to Pittsburgh to start his design career with Dan Droz Designs, a product design firm, developing and manufacturing a line of peppermills and housewares distributed by H.E. Lauffer. The business later expanded into home furnishings, developing a broad range of furniture for manufacturers in Denmark, Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea. He became known as the Houdini of Hardware for his innovative application of Ready to Assemble (RTA) hardware to help consumers assemble furniture. Droz served as its President until 1975.

In 1981, he partnered with George Beylerian to design and manufacture contemporary furniture widely featured in the New York Times and other publications. He received 2 Daphne Awards for furniture design. In 1983, he was invited by Nordisk Andels Export, a Danish cooperative representing Danish furniture manufacturers, to design a broad range of furniture distributed internationally.

Droz also designed furniture, including seating, case goods, and dining, for various US, Canadian, and Taiwan companies and was awarded an additional five Daphne Awards (unprecedented). His furniture was included in a variety of groups and Furniture as Art exhibitions. Droz was a furniture designer with Amisco Industries Ltd., where he targeted his designs to this consumer's taste and lifestyle.

Editor

From 1986-1992, Droz was the Design Editor for FDM Magazine, Chicago, IL.

Educator

In 1972, Droz was a Teaching Assistant to Toshiro Katayama. At Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), he served as Adjunct Associate Professor of Design (1984 - 1986), Visiting Professor of Design Management (1986 - 2003), and Director of Design for Business Program (1992 - 2003).

Entrepreneur and leader

In 1972, Droz served as the Vice President of Planning and Product Development at Droz Corporation, a diversified manufacturer and distributor of wood and steel products until its sale in 1980.

In 1984, at Carnegie Mellon he collaborated with business and engineering schools to co-found the Interdisciplinary Product Development Program at Carnegie Mellon University, with Peter Farquar and Fritz Prinz, integrating students and faculty representing design, marketing, and engineering in a single program to promote collaborative ‘design thinking’ in product development. In 1985, this course was the pioneer in the US to integrate 3D printing with 3D Systems as a method for rapid prototyping. He was invited to speak at various international conferences to expand awareness of design thinking and rapid product development. He led the program until 2003.

In 1988, Droz was invited by the United States Information Agency (USIA) as a Guide Training Coordinator to lead the training of American guides for the world’s largest design exposition, which toured 9 Soviet cities. In the same year, he founded Droz Marketing and served as its President, specializing in brand strategy. From 1988-1995, he was a Partner at WorldBridge Design and Development Corporation in Taipei and the USA.

In 1990, he founded and was Executive Director of the Design for Business Program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), to develop materials and promote design as a competitive advantage. The same year, he established Droz and Associates to provide design and branding services. It grew to over 30 employees, served a national clientele, developed products and corporate identities, and became recognized for a distinctive style that often involved sculptural references. Until 2018, he served as the President of Droz and Associates.

In 1997, with Merrick Furst, a fellow Carnegie Mellon professor of Computer Science, Droz founded Essential Surfing Gear, an internet software company that provided technology to bring information to people as they browsed the World Wide Web. It grew to over 50 employees with customers, including Barnes and Noble, CNET, and MySimon, until the company was sold in 2001. He was a founding partner at Weisshouse, a home furnishing retailer, but sold his interest in 1998 when he co-founded Wishbox.com, an integrated gift registry on the web. From 1996-2015, Droz co-founded and served as VP for several technology startups, including Emodt, Six Degrees, and Slant.

Sculptor

Although Droz has been a Sculptor since 1974, he did not exhibit nor sell his work until 2018, when he started practicing sculpting full time and had his first solo exhibition. He has a separate studio to make freestanding and wall sculptures and some works on paper, influenced by Constructivism, the Italian Memphis movement, De Stijl, and Ulm Schools, where he brought a distinctive design sensibility to his work. His early works were made primarily of wood and often involved moveable elements that encouraged viewer interaction.

Because of his business interests, aside from commissions, he did not exhibit his work. In 2019, Droz closed his design business to devote full time to sculpture and has since participated in over fifty juried shows and five solo exhibitions.

His current sculpture incorporates novel aluminum, glass, and polymer fabrication methods. In 2018, he invented a method for folding large aluminum sheets that allow complex forms to be created from sheets as tall as 8 feet, much like Japanese kirigami paper folding. Influenced by his early career as a magician, he often incorporates reflective and concealed surfaces and optical illusions to call attention to the limits of perception. Droz has developed novel methods for fabricating sculptures with wire mesh and innovative techniques for folding glass and casting sculptures directly from 3D-printed models.

In his work, Droz has employed the themes of perspective, and trompe l'oeil in his furniture designs and wall sculpture. An early table he designed in the 1980s used a checkerboard patterned veneer to create a trompe l'oeil version of a table with a checkered tablecloth. The same theme was employed in several sculptural works, such as Striped Tablecloth and several versions of checkered tablecloth, incorporating false perspectives to allow a flat panel to be observed as a table. In another wall sculpture, Water Ribbon, Droz used perspective to evoke an experience of water flowing from a cube from simple shapes and flat colors. Although there are frequent figurative or iconographic references, most of his work lives in geometric abstraction. Straight edges, repeating triangle and trapezoid motifs, intersecting lines and flat colors dominate the bulk of Droz's oeuvre.

Based on his concentrations at Harvard, combining the History of Science and Visual and Environmental Studies, and his early career as a professional magician, Droz sees sculpture as an opportunity to innovate through experimentation and not see reality as a fixed or commonly held perception. This gap between what people perceive and all that is in magic is accentuated in Droz’s work through reflective and hidden surfaces, perspective, and innovative materials and finishes. His work has been exhibited at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, The Museum of Art and History, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh International Airport, and the Three Rivers Heritage Trail.

In June 2022, Droz became the subject of the book Behind the Fold, a monograph on Droz’s life and work by Los Angeles publisher Griffith Moon. The book also documents his recent work and fabrication methods for creating glass sculptures.

Speaker

Droz has spoken to audiences throughout the US, Canada, Taiwan, Korea, England, and the Former Soviet Union on design and creative problem-solving.

Awards and recognition

• Agency of the Year for Western PA, 2013/2015
• Grand Marketer of the Year, American Marketing Association, 2014
• Distinguished Alumni at the 30th Anniversary of Harvard’s Visual Arts Center (Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts), 1996
• 7 Daphne Awards (“Oscars’ of Furniture Design), 1984 - 1986, (Unprecedented)
• Designer of the Year, RTA Convention NYC, 1985
• Designer’s Choice Award for Outstanding Industrial Design, Industrial Design Magazine, 1984
• Best of the United States, Review of Products, Abitari Magazine, Milan, Italy, 1983
• Guest Editor Competition, Mademoiselle Magazine, 1972
• 31 Marketer of the Year Awards from the American Marketing Association (unprecedented)
• Mary Philliips Award for Sculpture

Personal life

Droz is married to Cathy (Cohen) Droz, a former executive with Family Communications, producer of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Fred Rogers Company (FRC), Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and other children’s programs. They have four children, Lani (Michael) Gamliel, David (Allie) Droz, Ben Droz, and Becca Droz.

As of 2022, the Droz family is known to have taken a picture in front of a numbered highway sign for their annual holiday card for the past 42 years.

Bibliography

Books

• Dan Droz, 2016. Fellow Travelers: Four Decades of Droz Family New Years' Cards: Droz. ISBN 978-1-54-125493-0
• Dan Droz, 2014. Click Here!: How To Attract, Convert & Transform Strangers Into Customers. ISBN 978-1-50-233782-5
• Dan Droz, Dr. Victor Prisk, 2014. G.A.I.N. Plan: Unleash the Power of Performance: How To Build Muscle, Eliminate Fat, Reach Peak Conditioning. ISBN 978-0-57-814292-0
• The Seven Principles of Marketing
• Dan Droz, 2022. Dan Droz: Behind The Fold, published by Griffith Moon Publishing in collaboration with Ingram Publishing.

Other works

• Article: “Prototyping: A Key to Managing Product Development,” Journal of Business Strategy, May/June 1992
• “Teaching Accountability in Design,” Proceedings of the 1991 Design Educator’s Conference
• “Interdisciplinary Product Design: Obstacles and Opportunities,” CIT Magazine, Carnegie Mellon University, 1990
• “Teaching Ethics and Professional Responsibility,” Proceedings of the 1990 Design Educator’s Conference, Pasadena, CA
• “Lessons of a Moscow Adventure,” Interface: The Newsletter of the Department of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, 1989
• “New Methods of Teaching Product Development,” Proceedings of the 1989 Design Educator’s Conference, Minneapolis, MN
• “Multidisciplinary Product Development,” Visions: The Journal of the Product Development Management Association, 1989
• “Competing in a New World Market,” Chinese edition Furniture Design & Manufacturing Magazine, 1988
• “Watershed Times for the Contract Market,” Furniture Design & Manufacturing Magazine, 1987
• “The Hearth as Home,” FDM, 1987
• “New Approaches to Product Development,” Journal of Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, 1987
• Article: “Design Protection,” Furniture Design & Manufacturing Magazine, 1986
• “Team-Based Product Development,” Innovation, Summer Issue